


knowing you are terrible and accepting it

by twoheadedcalf



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Criminal Activities, Gen, Growing Up, I guess???, beau centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 00:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoheadedcalf/pseuds/twoheadedcalf
Summary: A girl complaining about Beau and her messy hair and her lack of etiquette wouldn’t bother Beau (well, it would but-). Ten different girls pestering Beau about her hair and her etiquette bothers her. It bothers her a lot. It bothers her so much that she punches one of the girls. It’s the first time she’s actually thrown a punch. It’s satisfying. It feels good.or, Beau growing up.*day one of beau week 2k19: childhood & youth.





	knowing you are terrible and accepting it

 The vineyard behind her family’s state was Beau’s holy ground when she was young and small and almost innocent.

During the day, she’d run herself silly, the reddish-brown earth dirtying her feet, dirtying her dress. The workers barely paying any attention to her. She never knew any of their names, not then and not ever. But they were the best type of people in her childish eyes, the ones that never kept her from having fun.

Often, there’d be people chasing her around. A nanny, most often. One of her tutors, maybe. A maid, sometimes. Not to entertain her; to make her stop. To have her be a proper lady. (The people chasing her were never her parents, though. They didn’t have time for that kind of thing.)

The best moments, though, were at night, when the house was empty (emptier, she means). She’d sneak around the house, child feet clumsy but light, careful. She’d go to the vineyard, climb the highest tree she could find and watch the moon rise over the mountains. She’d never cared for moonlight but the wind in her hair felt nice.

*

Growing up, her childhood varied between moments of being caged in, having all of her life restrained to a schedule defined by others, full of tutors, full of responsibilities, full of rules, and then-. Large periods of nothing, where no one would search for her, no one care for her, paid any attention to her. It was very freeing (it was very lonely).

There were very few tutors that she didn’t manage to drive away. The old woman with graying hair, so pompous, that was responsible for teaching her etiquette (she knew all of the guidelines, eventually; she just didn’t care about any of them) and the ratty man that taught her Halfling. Maybe she ought to respect them for putting up with her. She didn’t. Not at the time, at least.

(She remembers this one time the old lady gave her father a report on her non-progress while Beau was still present for it. It was lightly humiliating. The worse part of it was how her father didn’t seem to care in the slightest.)

She doesn’t remember seeing her mother often as a child or even caring about seeing her. The whole family would meet for dinner when she was that small and she’d see her mother’s face, beat with face powder, and she’d hear her mother admonish her for her manners and her posture, and she listens to her mother complain about all the ‘friends’ she’d met that day.

Nothing she’d ever said or done had the same impact as all the things her father did. Maybe that’s for the best.

*

Her first true friend was a maid called Vivian, a young woman with dark hair and green eyes. (And isn’t that fucked up, that her first friend wasn’t someone her age, wasn’t someone that willingly spent time with her?)

She’d take care of Beau’s scabbed knees with gentle hands and gentle words. She’d listen to her go on and on about fencing and about all the things she shouldn’t have done but still did and she’d smile. She would listen to Beau complain about her lessons and she’d pay her and her tutors compliments, she’d say the kindest of words.

(Looking back on it, at the memories tainted by affection, resentment, and time, Beau can’t figure out if it was all genuine or just a young woman angling for a sweet spot on her new job. Beau doesn’t even know if she’d begrudge Vivian for it.)

One day, at the vineyard (always at the vineyard, always at the vineyard), her father found them: Beau, up in a tree, bending one of the branches, and Vivian climbing up to join her, a basket filled with clean clothes abandoned on the ground by the tree’s roots.

He’d taken Beau off the tree by her armpits (the first time he’d held her in a very long time) and taken Vivian to his office, leaving Beau to stim in her room. She never found out what happened that day in that office.

The worst part is that Vivian kept working for them, inside the house. She just wouldn’t speak to Beau anymore. Wouldn’t even look at her. No sparing glance.

*

At some point, that Beau can’t exactly place, her parents stopped caring about her. Probably at the same time that Beau stopped caring about keeping herself in check.

Here’s how it started: Beau was forced to go to a tea party. A rich-girls-only tea party. Otherwise known as, at least in Beau’s mind, annoying-girls-only tea party.

Beau knows these kinds of events, has been to many of them, even in her short lifetime. Knows that they are nothing but another way to showcase the amount of power you have. “Look, look at how good I am at maintaining this shitty society! It must mean something that I can replicate so perfectly, yes? Yes!”

There’s nothing fun about going to a tea party at eleven years old. Nothing fun about sitting pretty and dainty, away from the sun, when the grass is green and _right there_.

A girl complaining about Beau and her messy hair and her lack of etiquette wouldn’t bother Beau (well, it would but-). Ten different girls pestering Beau about her hair and her etiquette bothers her. It bothers her a lot. It bothers her so much that she punches one of the girls. It’s the first time she’s actually thrown a punch. It’s satisfying. It feels _good_.

*

After that, for a few years, it’s a complete blur. She’s not allowed to go to events anymore, not with her parents and especially not alone. Which feels good; she’s glad for it.

She also doesn’t have access to the vineyard anymore. Isn’t allowed to leave the house. Even the slightest mention of fencing has people shushing her. The only time she sees her father is when he’s admonishing her for something.

(She’s wrong. She’s always wrong about something. Her interests are always wrong. _She’s_ wrong. Gods, why are you like this, Beauregard?)

Most of her time is spent alone, finding ways to entertain herself (mostly by thrashing important things in the house). The rest of her time is spent with people she doesn’t like (they don’t like her in the first place and are much more vicious about it but pointing that out would be a weakness and wouldn’t get her anywhere, anyway).

It doesn’t do much for her, getting caged in, having adults obsess over making her be prim and proper. If anything, it just makes her meaner, dirtier, grittier, sneakier, snarkier. Her resentment grows and festers. Everything she says is scathing, everything she does is destructive. Never the perfect girl her parents strived for (never the perfect boy her parents actually wanted).

Then, suddenly, all of it stops. She’s left alone, no warning about it, no speech for it (“maybe it’s time you take responsibility for yourself, Beauregard-”). Beau doesn’t even know if that’s what she wanted but maybe it’s for the best. It has to be.

It’s like she’s a ghost in the house. She walks around and no one speaks to her, no one even looks at her. It’s like she’s not even there. For weeks, she doesn’t speak to her parents. She doesn’t miss it. She’s not sure what that says about her. She’s not sure she even cares.

*

She starts reselling the family wine in a haphazard, maniacal plot probably fueled by anger. A get back for something so insignificant, she doesn’t even remember what it was. That’s just how she was back then, though (that’s just how she was not so long ago).

It’s surprisingly easy to do it. Beau has always been curious, too nosy for her own good, and no one likes to look a gift horse in the mouth. The gift horse being Beau herself, the 16-year-old heiress to her family’s fortune selling their damn good wine to morally questionable people. No one’s complaining.

That’s her first time at a bar. Not a tea shop with a maid, not a boutique with some random old lady. A _real_ bar. No one appraises her, which is to be expected, but no one sneers at her either (not at first, anyway), which is not.

Beau starts showing up so much that she becomes a permanent and tolerable fixture at the wretched place. Sometimes she gets jobs; sometimes she’s given them. Maybe they thought she’d get bored soon enough (she did but there’s nothing better to do, not in Kamordah). She’s not wanted, she’s barely valued. She’s just the tour guide every traveling party antagonizes with.

(She becomes proud of it, eventually, of her ability to repel others but for a long time, she’s just very good at faking it.)

She gets used to it, being the odd one out blazing ahead but feeling like she’s trailing behind. It’s not that different, really, then the whole rest of her life.

*

It’s not that surprising, not at all, that her father’s ire is upon her and that he’s finally taking a stand. It’s not hard to catch news traveling in the wind in a small town like this. She’s only surprised it’s taken him this long.

She’s been running her underground wine-reselling scheme for at least three years, has been taking part in criminal activities in almost as long. Her father stopped sending servants to bail her out a long time ago. Her delinquent friends (are they _really_ friends?) never did. She’d gotten used to spending a night or two in a cell then being released for lack of evidence or lack of care.

It had become the norm. It was routine, being the disgraced Lionett heiress.

She almost welcomes her father’s turn to action. She doesn’t know if that’s what she wanted, after all (she still doesn’t know), but she wanted something. Anything.

(Beau had wondered, once, if he knew about the whole scheme and just let her go around as some kind of twisted truce. She dismissed it as ridiculous: the one thing her father cared about was his business. Here was the proof, finally, she guessed.)

What she didn’t expect was for him, in his final standing speech, his last time lecturing her, to be joined not by her mother, but instead and elven man and three henchmen-looking figures.

What she didn’t expect was to have her head sacked, to be dragged away, kicking and screaming, from the only place she’s known her whole life (she’d known the moment they’d grabbed her that she wouldn’t be able to get away – she’d never been allowed to learn how to fight, no matter how much she pleaded).

What she didn’t expect was that coupled with the zen and book bullshit, she’d learn how to properly throw a punch. It was for the best, though. It had to be.

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first fic for critical role and my second time actually publishing fanfiction anywhere!! i'm really proud of it and i know it's good!! hope yall like it!
> 
> (also, please warn if there any grammar mistakes or misspells, i'm not good at proofreading!!)
> 
> you can find me as @detectivenott on twitter or follow me on tumblr as @female-pain.


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